There
could have been no finer or more appropriate conductor than
Boult to undertake these recordings. They were made over
the years and at different sessions with two different orchestras
but they have the Boult stamp of consistency and elevation,
one marked by formal logic, architectural surety and a strongly
expressive profile which never breaches the bounds of decorum.

Which
means that you will possibly have heard a performance of
Butterworth’s A ‘Shropshire Lad’ Rhapsody that will
have sounded to you more immediately thrilling and suffused
in – can one add this? – bathos. But you will not easily
have heard a performance more complete in its assurance or
surer in its means, I think, than this one. Boult had heard
its premiere under Nikisch in Leeds but that is maybe only
an incidental question given that Nikisch was supposed to
have given a slovenly performance. Boult’s eloquence is radiant,
the pacing and unfolding of melodic lines refulgent, the
whole bathed in longing and loss. We find the same in the
second of the English Idylls, where the cantilena is spun
in a loving arc – how that phrase would have distressed Boult – and
the winds are at their most communicative, phrasing with
undulating warmth; the harp is well balanced and the Rodney
Friend-led strings carve their way with avid drive. Boult
wasn’t always at his most incisive in the studio from the
mid seventies but the First Idyll begs to differ in this
performance – a relishable folkloric jostle.

There
is a sequence of music by Howells; near contemporaries he
and Boult died within a day of each other in 1983. Procession was
originally written for piano and orchestrated for performance
in 1922. It has real Russophile colour and drama and is chock
full of tension and tensile power. Conversely Merry Eye is
a concoction of pastoral and Stravinskian influences – bright,
tight rhythms and the piano used as percussive colour. It’s
not inappropriate that the tempo slackens for the Elegy which
has small hints of the Tallis Fantasia and Vaughan Williams
modality generally; it’s played with rich tone and sagacious
perception by the august Herbert Downes. Music for a Prince is
in two movements. The first Corydon’s Dance is a rehash
of music from The Bs suite whilst Scherzo in Arden is
a more galvanic piece – pastoral but full of outbursts of
verve and confidence. The first was dedicated to Francis “Bunny” Warren,
who was killed in the War; the second was written for that
Young Man About Town, Arthur Bliss.

There
are two more reasons for acquiring this disc. Warlock’s An
Old Song is very Delianthough the Celtic-Cornish
twilights are audible as well and a feel of Brigg Fair in
outline. We should remember that the idiom was far from novel
to Boult – he’d conducted the world premiere of Delius’s
Violin Concerto after all. Then finally there is Patrick
Hadley’s One Morning in Spring, written for Vaughan
Williams’s seventieth birthday, which feints toward pastoral
simplicity but instead admits low brass turmoil to inject
a bucolic and dramatic note.

Here’s
a compilation of real stature sourced from Lyrita’s vaults
and presented in accustomed upland splendour. One not to
be missed.

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